


Au Café des Âmes

by LaLionne (otayuriistheliteralbest)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, M/M, Pansexual Lance (Voltron), Soulmates, but just to be safe!, mentions of lost limb (not graphic), shance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14832197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otayuriistheliteralbest/pseuds/LaLionne
Summary: Lance never thought long and hard about who his soulmate was, if he even had one. Not everyone did, after all, whether it be that they weren’t born at the right time, or their soulmate died before they met. Soulmarks manifested as the person’s scribbles on their skin. It certainly made it for easy communication, and if you knew the person already, could be anything from, ‘be there soon!’ to grocery lists and doodles. Lance had never seen so much as a pen dot on his hand that didn’t belong there, jotted down by his own hand.





	Au Café des Âmes

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the AUs and Overused Tropes challenge in the Vol-Tron? server. Unedited, so all mistakes are mine! Only...one day late. xD

Lance never thought long and hard about who his soulmate was, if he even had one. Not everyone did, after all, whether it be that they weren’t born at the right time, or their soulmate died before they met. Soulmarks manifested as the person’s scribbles on their skin. It certainly made it for easy communication, and if you knew the person already, could be anything from, ‘be there soon!’ to grocery lists and doodles. Lance had never seen so much as a pen dot on his hand that didn’t belong there, jotted down by his own hand.

After a while, Lance just stopped caring. He must be one of the many in the world who simply didn’t have a predetermined soulmate, and honestly he liked it that way. He had the freedom to flirt with anyone and everyone he wished to, and he did so with almost a manic zeal.

Lance scribbled notes to himself on his right arm and hand. Places to visit, his grocery list, reminders, pretty much anything because he never had to worry about someone else seeing it. He wore short sleeves as part of his uniform at the cafe where he worked and just stopped thinking about it after a while.

“Lance, I need a quad shot vanilla latte.”

Lance snapped out of his thoughts, giving his coworker, Pidge, a classic-Lance dazzling smile. They rolled their eyes and handed him a to-go cup. He looked at his right arm, filled with notes, and jotted the order down on his left arm along with several others Pidge rattled off in a messy shorthand that even he could barely read. He definitely was _not_ ambidextrous.

“You got it, Pidgeotto!” Lance said, turning to the espresso bar behind him. He pulled the shots with ease, making all the drinks Pidge had given him and continuing as the line continued to go to the door. Pidge called out drinks to him from the register, helping to pull shots when needed. Lance finished off the last order with finesse, twisting the soy milk pitcher over the cup to create the shape of a cat face in the foam. He took a toothpick and added the whiskers, then glanced at the name on the side of the cup.

“Soy latte for Shiro?” he called out, looking around. The café was all but empty after the rush, and he spotted the customer waiting at the counter. The man was _built_ , with shoulders Lance wanted to grab on to and an easy smile that lit up his eyes. His hair was buzzed in an undercut Lance’s hands itched to touch and he wore a long sleeve black button-up. What threw Lance off, though, was the right sleeve of the man’s shirt, which had been rolled up and pinned against the stump where his right arm should have been.

Lance blinked and glanced back up at the other man’s face. Now that he looked closer, he saw a barely-perceptible scar covering the bridge of his nose. Pidge cleared their throat behind Lance’s back, snapping Lance out of his trance. 

“Sorry, man. You Shiro?” Lance asked, holding the to-go cup out to him.

The man looked down at the foam cat in the cup and snorted, one side of his mouth curling up in a grin.

“Yeah, that’s me. Nice work on the foam art.” Shiro grabbed the cup and took a careful sip. His tired eyes brightened. “This is perfect, thanks.” He saluted Lance with the cup and walked out.

But not before Lance noticed the hand-scribbled notes on his left wrist, exactly where Lance had written down his shorthand drink orders.

\---

He must have imagined it, that’s all there was to it. Shiro could have a tattoo, or someone write their number there. Something like that. Lance ran scenarios through his head, but he kept coming back to the fact that he’d never written on his left arm, not that he could ever remember, because he was left-handed and would normally have more than enough room to doodle on his right arm… which Shiro was very obviously missing, and wouldn’t it just be his luck?

Lance started practicing writing with his right hand and grimaced at his attempts. It looked like a child’s attempts at writing in crayon. He bit his lip and continued to try. For weeks he kept this up, even as his first scrawled notes on his left arm faded.

During that time, Shiro hadn't returned to the café. Lance knew he was probably putting too much thought into this, that the marks he’d seen on Shiro’s arm really _were_ something else, but he couldn’t help but to hope.

Finally, his off-hand writing didn’t look as terrible as it had before, and he carefully wrote out the sentence, tongue gripped between his teeth in concentration.

_My name is Lance and I work at the Café des Âmes. Soy latte on me?_

He looked down at his arm and nodded to himself. If it turned out that Shiro wasn’t the one, that what Lance saw was just a tattoo or something, he would find out soon enough.

Lance went to work like normal that morning. It was bean roasting day, and he flitted back and forth from the roasting room to the front counter with buckets and buckets of beans. He managed to forget about the note on his arm, focusing entirely on the task at hand.

He was bent over under the counter stowing the latest batch of beans when he heard the bell above the door go off. It was a slow afternoon lull at that point, so Pidge had nipped outside for a break, leaving Lance alone in the shop.

“Just a moment!” Lance called out, grunting as he shifted the heavy buckets around.

“Sorry, are you Lance?” the voice called out in a rush. That voice sounded familiar. Lance banged his head on the bottom of the counter in his rush to stand up. He cursed, slapping a hand over the lump forming on his head, which made him swear even louder.

“Quiznak, that hurt…” he muttered. Now upright, Lance looked across the counter to the customer and his heart skipped a beat.

There, panting as if he’d just run a marathon, was Shiro. He wore a black t-shirt today with a purple lion emblazoned on it, forelegs raised as if ready to fight. Lance could see the stump where Shiro’s right arm ended, exposed by the short sleeve of the t-shirt. Lance shifted his gaze to his left arm.... where his note from the morning stood out in clear black ink in Lance’s choppy right-handwriting. He felt as if the wind had been knocked from his sails.

“It _is_ you,” Lance said. He held his left arm out to Shiro’s, confirming what he now knew: here, this man right in front of him, was his soulmate. 

“I-I had no idea,” Shiro stuttered. “I lost my arm when I was in high school, and most people are right-handed--”

Lance leaned over the counter and cupped his hand behind Shiro’s neck, cutting him off.

“I didn’t think you existed,” Lance said. “It all makes so much sense now.”

Shiro leaned in toward him. “I have so many questions,” he said.

“Me, too,” Lance muttered, body gravitating ever closer to Shiro’s, his hand still at the nape of Shiro’s neck. He scritched his nails along the delicious stubble of Shiro’s undercut.

“Is this okay?” Lance asked him, voice hushed.

Shiro’s eyes fluttered shut. “Yes, yes it is. Can I kiss you?”

Lance’s heart thudded in his chest. “I thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
